Problem Overview

The concept of this project originated from an early COVID19 problem that many financial institutions aimed to solve: 

How might we turn cash payments into contactless payments?

Through ideation sessions and preliminary research, the scope of this problem was narrowed to a cashless college campus as the primary use case. This project is still in its infancy, so we have not yet done any prototyping.

My Role

I am one of two designers co-leading this effort. As we are still in the early stages of the project, our work has been focused on exploration and discovery:

• Ideation Sessions
  
• User Focus Groups
• Competitor Research
• Journey Mapping

Ideation Sessions

We facilited a 2-day design thinking workshop with stakeholders on the problem of "cash to contactless"

Rose Bud Thorn: Based on our preliminary research, we identified multiple clusters for participants to brainstorm on i.e. card payments, cash conversion. Then, we allowed participants time to individually brainstorm on the benefits (rose/green sticky), opportunities (bud/blue sticky), and pain points (thorn/red sticky) found within each cluster. 

Big Idea Poster: We used this activity to allow participants to expand upon ideas discovered while brainstorming during Rose Bud Thorn. It helped to identify what major ideas people were thinking of as important. 

Affinity Clustering & Insight Generation: After day 1 of the workshop, my team and I analyzed and grouped similar sticky notes. From those groups, we pulled out some insights that were super informative around the overall themes we saw. On day 2, we presented bout our analysis and findings. 

Goals

We recognize that this project is not necessarily going to be a huge "moneymaker", rather it will truly be an experience improvement for those on campuses i.e staff, students, vendors. 

Digital Student ID

By allowing students to have a digital ID on their phones, we can also integrate with other wallet functionality. This would allow students to get into their dorms, swipe for meals at the dining hall, and buy books all from their phone, rather than carrying around their plastic cards. 

Parent To Child Transfers

Because many students are still parent-funded during college, we want to make the account transfer process painless and seamlessly integrated with the digital ID.

Athletic Per Diem

We want to make it easier for athletic departments to manage and distribute the per diems when student athletes travel for games and competitions. Similarly, this can be applied to research stipends for those who perform or participate in clinical studies.

Dining Purchases

 A major part of a campus is, of course, its dining options. Whether its a meal swipe from the dining hall, or a coffee from Starbucks, we want to integrate with all

Current State Journey Mapping

After we narrowed the scope down to our specified goals, we started doing a current state deep dive where we mapped out different types of students and their daily schedules, noting where they might scan their ID or make a purchase.